CASE STUDY

Hochanda is the UK leading Craft TV Shopping Channel, the ideal destination for crafts, hobbies, and arts lovers. As of 2022, Hochanda acquired Create and Craft, an existing Simplestream client, growing the offering for the audiences in multiple territories.

The company chose Simplestream to expand the teleshopping channel’s offering to a wider audience, reached via big screen TV apps, including live and catch-up content. With the objective of simplifying existing operations workflows, the initial brief included the automation of live streaming and catch-up services across the UK and US territories. The solution also neede to be integrated with existing third-party providers.

Simplestream built the frontend solution for the revamped OTT offering on the solid foundations of App Platform, the framework to power premium content. With big screens applications at the core of the offering, it developed a solution to surface Create and Craft’s programming on web and major big screen Smart TVs, including Android TV, Fire TV, Samsung TV, LG TV, and Hisense. Paired with a robust set of analytics tools, the solution allows Create and Craft to reach audiences in different territories, and measure the effectiveness of the teleshopping offering in terms of monetisation.

Media Manager, instead, sits at the heart of the backend, the cloud-based system to manage content for distribution. The flexible solution allows Create and Craft to seamlessly control the content workflow, from live streams to on demand assets, with the automation of catch-up generation through the Live2VOD module.

Media Manager supports the ingesting, encoding, packaging, storage, protection, and streaming, of live and on-demand multimedia content. The live stream ingestion includes generation of daily EPG feeds – imported nightly from the designated provider – with the ability for the operator to set blackout rules for programmes, series or a specific time, and manage the metadata, including imagery to accompany each single program.

The Live2VOD module provides Create and Craft with a best-in-class solution to automate the generation of catch-up content from live streams, within minutes from broadcast. Content generated is automatically allocated relevant categories and publishing windows, allowing Hochanda to manage their video catalogue and engaging viewers via dynamic carousels.

Simplestream helped Create and Craft to streamline and automate the distribution of their crafting and teleshopping-focused programming to a wide audience in the UK and the US. By combining classic hobby and craft programming and concepts of commercial TV, Create and Craft attracts the attention of hundreds of thousand viewers, who are able to consume their favourite content on dedicated apps built for web, Android TV and Fire TV, with other platforms being rolled out for Samsung, LG, and Hisense.

The seamless way to manage content for distribution through Media Manager and its core modules, helped the client to provide its existing audience with live and catch-up content, with the goal to keep the viewers engaged through hours and hours of programming.